a dagger to his very soul. ‘She may still return,’ he said. ‘That’s why I’m not allowing any of the things to be packed away.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘Hell, if she doesn’t want the wedding we don’t need it. Why, Thomas? Why has she left me? She told me she loved me, she told me she was happy, and I believed her.’
I said I could offer no explanation. It was quite bizarre. He then rambled on about her being abducted, forced to write the letter; she’d been kidnapped, and her jewellery taken as well. That was the reason, no matter how preposterous it appeared. He was clutching at any explanation he could.
‘Find her for me, Thomas,’ he asked as evening drew in on us. He had calmed down somewhat but he looked desperately beat up. ‘I don’t care what it takes, how much money, how long, just find her for me.’
I didn’t take him seriously at first. ‘What if she doesn’t want to be found?’ I speculated.
‘You were the best detective on the force. If anyone can find her, persuade her to come back to me, then that man is you. Help me, Thomas. I’m begging you, as a friend.’
I did not have the heart to disappoint him. I caved in to his ardent request. ‘You may not like what I find,’ I warned.
‘I don’t care. I simply want her back, good or bad. I’d give all this,’ he said, pointing loosely at the walls around him, ‘in exchange for her. She’s my life. I cannot live without her.’ He went to a cabinet and took out two photographs, which he held out for me to take. They were of Evelyn, sat in the Shelter by the glazed arched window where I’d first seen her. ‘They are copies, old boy.’ He looked on them as if his very soul would crumble into dust. ‘In case you need them.’ When he handed them over he turned his back on me, perhaps to hide the moistness in his eyes. ‘Find her for me, Charles. Return her to me, that is all I ask.’
Yet it was not that simple. During my short stay all hell broke loose. Simon’s son, David, came with news of a servant’s discovery. It transpired that many more things had gone missing alongside Evelyn. Apart from a significant amount of the former Mrs Lambert-Chide’s jewellery, there were many other valuable objects, including two small watercolours by the Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti; in truth the Victorian paintings had fallen out of favour with the art-buying public and were not worth a great deal in themselves, but in total the haul was worth many, many thousands of pounds.
‘I told you she was a bad egg, father,’ said David Lambert-Chide, wearing a corrosive I-told-you-so sneer. ‘Well, I’ve called the police. They will soon put a stop to this woman’s wicked ways. She was obviously part of a gang, had been planning this for ages. They knew exactly which pieces to target. Preparing for a wedding? She was all along preparing to fleece you, father, taking you for a jolly old ride.’
Simon, naturally, refused to believe the evidence of his own eyes. And true to David’s word a veritable sandstorm of police officers descended upon Gattenby House, swirling around every hallway and corridor and filling the house in their search for evidence.
Simon did not want me to leave, even though I thought it wasn’t my place to be there in the midst of all this family angst. He took me into his private chambers. ‘Thomas,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what this is all about, but I don’t care a jot about the damned jewellery and paintings. I want you to find her, as you promised.’
‘But the police will soon find her,’ I said. ‘There are enough of them on the case, after all.’
‘Damn the police! She is innocent!’ he fired at me. Then his eyes softened. ‘They are looking for a thief. You are looking for a woman. Please, Thomas, for an old friend. Promise me you’ll try to find her. You are better than the whole of Scotland Yard. If anyone can locate her, then I know you can.’
We parted on the shaking of hands and an agreement that I would try my best, which seemed to calm him down somewhat, though I feared for his health, even at that stage in the game. I came away from Gattenby House with a heavy heart.
And so events took a queer turn. I began my long search for Evelyn Carter as promised. And this is where there came that inexplicable link with the long-deceased Jimmy Tate. It transpired the woman whom Simon had fallen in love with was not the real Evelyn Carter.
It gave weight to David Lambert-Chide’s accusations. It was part of a grand swindle. The Evelyn Carter whom his fiance claimed to be had died thirty years previously.
3
He sat on the edge of his bed, a fourteen-year-old boy on the verge of uncertain manhood, staring at the old wooden trunk lying on the floor in front of him. There were hefty bands of metal at the trunk’s corners, more ribs of metal enveloping it in a brutal embrace, a monstrous medieval-looking padlock securing the lid. Dust motes circled it, as if intrigued.
This box, this mere container, was all that was left of his grandfather; the only physical testament to a life once lived. His house, sold, lived in by others; his clothes, given away to the poor; his small and worthless collection of seaside pottery sent to the local tip; his meagre life savings shared out and quickly spent. All that remained of his grandfather, Thomas Rayne, one-time soldier, one-time famous detective, one-time dotty old man, all but forgotten and living alone in his quiet suburban semi, was this battered, scarred and scuffed old trunk pasted with fading labels from faraway places.
Charles Rayne rested his bandaged chin on his bandaged hand without thinking and winced at the pain. Today had been particularly bad, his skin afire, the weeping lesions and sores each as painful as if someone had been stubbing cigarettes out on his flesh. It was at times like this that he wondered what crime he had committed to be singled out for such punishment. Yet he was aware that today’s punishment was something he’d brought on himself, because he had dared to step out into the sunshine. He’d been unable to take the sight of closed curtains, knowing that outside the summer sun shone strong, and a sort of madness had taken over his fourteen-year-old mind. He went for a walk onto the moor; clambered up the huge natural rock edifice that was Mam Tor, to stand breathlessly on top of the high, sheer cliff of shifting black shale and feel the wind buffet him, as if it said he should not be there and tried to force him back down.
Tears stung his eyes, the bright light at once blinding, beautiful and terrifying. Hope Valley lay stretched out like a model far below. Hope Valley. How ironic. He should not do this; everything inside him was screaming for him to turn back and take shelter inside the safety and gloom of his curtained bedroom. He knew he would suffer for this. But he didn’t care. He desperately needed to see the green of the summer grass, the pure blue of the sky, to witness birds wheeling freely many hundreds of feet below him, unconstrained by walls and fear. He didn’t care if he shrivelled up and died. Life had become pointless. He might as well jump from the cliff and end his suffering.
Charles Rayne was unlike other boys of his age. He was unlike anyone he knew. He could not go out in daylight.
There was a time — it seemed so, so long ago now — when he was normal, like any other kid, nothing special to separate him out. Then at ten years old it was as if a switch had been flicked on inside him. His body began to rebel. The skin on his face, arms and legs blistered as if he’d been attacked by a blowtorch, and he fell dreadfully ill. For a while they feared for his life, and struggled to find a reason for what was happening to him. They bathed his ruptured skin and scratched their collective heads. He was obviously allergic to something. What had he eaten? They banned certain foods to no avail. Eventually it dawned on them; he could not go out in daylight. When they kept him inside, sheltered from even the tiniest chinks of light, he recovered. Never fully; his skin remained sensitive to the touch and was prone to blistering without reason. But now they knew any exposure to daylight caused a reaction. For young Charles that wasn’t the worst of it. He screamed the first time he went to the toilet and saw his urine had turned a deep red, almost the colour of a fresh bruise. He thought he was dying.
So Charles was kept indoors, his mother employing private tutors who had to work by the light of lamps. He could no longer go out onto the high moors that surrounded the village of Elldale, or play in one of the many freezing streams that gushed down the craggy hillsides. Instead, he played with his friends in a strange twilight world, till they exchanged this gloomy netherworld for the lure of the outside. They gave his condition a fancy name — porphyric hemophilia. Some people weren’t so sure, but they felt they needed to label it with something. He was bounced eagerly from one specialist to another by his mother, desperate to find a cure and secretly blaming herself
